Accretion of matter by condensed objects

Abstract

The equations of motion for steady-state spherical symmetric flow of matter into or out of a condensed object (e.g. neutron stars, ‘black holes’, etc.) are displayed and solved for simple polytropic gases. It appears that infalling matter may be heated as hot as 1012K and that X-ray luminosities of the order of 1037 erg s−1 could result. The two fluid (electrons and ions separately) approach is also examined and it is shown that electrostatic fields of the order of 105 V m−1 are required near the surface of the object. Such fields are not strong enough to significantly modify the space-time metric.